About this artwork
Mary Cassatt painted The Child's Bath in 1893, in her studio in Paris. She was 49, one of the few American members of the Impressionist group, and she had been painting mothers and children for about five years. This is her most famous painting, and it is one of the most reproduced images of motherhood in Western art.
A mother sits on the edge of a bed or chair, holding a child on her lap. The child sits with its feet in a basin of water, its body turned toward the viewer, its face looking down at its feet. The mother, her body bent forward, washes the child's foot with her right hand. Both figures are seen from above, as if the viewer is standing close by. The room is decorated with patterned wallpaper and a patterned rug, and the basin sits on a patterned cloth.
Cassatt was influenced by Japanese prints, which she had seen in Paris in 1890 at a large exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The high viewpoint, the bold patterns, and the cropped composition all derive from Japanese woodblock prints. The painting is also influenced by the work of Degas, with whom Cassatt was close friends. Degas had been painting women at their toilette for years, and Cassatt adapted his subject to the relationship between mother and child.
Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, in 1844. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and moved to Paris in 1874. She exhibited with the Impressionists from 1879 onward, at the invitation of Degas, and she was the only American to show regularly with the group. She never married and had no children of her own, but she painted mothers and children throughout her career. Her paintings are not sentimental: the mothers are real women, the children are real children, and the physical closeness of the figures is observed rather than idealized.
Oil on canvas, 100 by 66 centimeters, roughly 39 by 26 inches. Cassatt painted with a smooth surface, building the figures in thin layers of color. The patterns on the wallpaper, the rug, and the cloth are rendered in flat areas of color, as in a Japanese print. The mother's face is in profile, her eyes focused on the child's foot. The child's face is turned away, its expression private.
The vertical format and intimate subject make this print work well in a bedroom, bathroom, or nursery. The mother and child theme suits a room with soft lighting and warm colors. A white frame keeps the painting's pastel palette clear. The 11x14 or 12x16 size gives the figures and the patterns enough detail to appreciate up close.
The painting is in the Art Institute of Chicago, where it has been since 1910.
This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.
